Personalizing the Desktop on a Windows Server 2008 Server Core install

As mentioned in a previous blog post, a Server Core install of Windows Server 2008 does not include Explorer or the MMC. However, it does have a GUI for logon and the command prompt is typically showed in a windows with a graphical background. You also have a screen saver with a password prompt and some of the other basic elements of a Windows desktop. You can avoid most of that by configuring your command prompt to go full-screen/character-mode, but what if you want to stay graphical and customize the desktop? While there is no control panel to configure those, the settings are still there, buried in the registry.

IMPORTANT: This post contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, check http://support.microsoft.com/?id=256986.

The default desktop configuration in Server Core should be fine for most people. You get the standard background color, the standard screen saver and a 10-minute delay before your screen gets locked. However, I work a lot on virtual environments for demonstrations and that brings a number of challenges. First of all, I usually need to differentiate between the multiple virtual machines I am running, and setting a unique background color helps. Second, I typically do not want to lock the screen on every guest OS every 10-minutes, since I already lock my host OS screen.

You will find that most if not all these Control Panel settings end up in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel" in the Registry. You can use REGEDIT.EXE (GUI) or REG.EXE (command-line) to check it. The two specific setting I was looking for were there. For the background color, you need to update the "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors\Background", changing the default RGB value of "29 95 122" to something like "150 150 150" for a nice gray color. To disable the screen saver, you can simple change the value in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\ScreenSaveActive" from the default 1 to 0. Be sure to logoff and log back on to apply these changes.

The only two control panel you have in Windows Server 2008 Server Core (at least in the June CTP) are the ones for date/time and regional settings ("control.exe timedate.cpl" and "controle.exe intl.cpl"). If you need anything else changed, you'll have to either put in the registry yourself or use a nice Group Policy to do it for you. If you just wanted to take a peek at what you can do, I included below the data I gathered with a REG "HKCU\Control Panel" /S command from a default install of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Core June CTP.

Be careful with your registry...